


The Siren’s Song and the Setting Sun

by user115 (Idonquixote)



Category: Gargoyles (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Interspecies Romance, MerMay, Mermaids, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 06:06:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24429961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Idonquixote/pseuds/user115
Summary: AU. Elisa is a mermaid in love with the fallen sun.
Relationships: Goliath/Elisa Maza
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	The Siren’s Song and the Setting Sun

**Author's Note:**

> I dug this up today- I think I wrote this all the way back in 2016 (or 15?) during my brief Gargoyles kick and decided to publish it here for MerMay.

There is a line where the water touches the sky, a shade of blue on blue. In childhood, she would peek her head above, small bubbles of air at her nostrils- the land dwellers’ massive boats float out of sight by then. Had it been up to her, she would have chased and followed. 

But there are things that cannot be. Instead, her eyes take to the sky, blinking away droplets of sunlight as the seagulls pass overhead. Birds. Wings carrying them through the wind, above the clouds and far, far from the world that bore her. 

In adolescence, she would come to that same line, watching the sky dip from blue to red to black, the water beneath her rippling along. She much preferred sunset to sunrise. She does not know why. 

There is a certain tragedy about it- like shipwrecks and sirens, of an aging warrior’s fall- the way the sun sets. For all its might, it succumbs to the sky and its fall is the most magnificent thing she has ever seen.

She is in love with the fallen sun. 

XX

Now she spends her time near the ships from land, untangling creatures from their bloodied nets, raking nails across ropes, and gashing her teeth on human hands. These are the waters of her family and she protects them as she would her own flesh and blood. She saves who she can and salvages what there is. 

At the bottom of the ocean’s sands, she keeps a wreckage of souvenirs, rather worthless to all but her. Her brother would have liked to see them- but something about this secret warms her. It makes her world brighter, special. This little secret is as dear to her as the navy tail below her waist, down to the vigorous flippers that carry it all, translucent and proud.

Wooden beams, silver trinkets, tattered fabric from long ago, things she protects within her own home.

But then _he_ comes in.

XX

He enters her world between clouds and storms, angry splashes and shouts from above. The ship barely escapes with its life, wooden wounds scattering through the rushing waves. There is not a drop of sun and only lighting and rain.

He sinks to the very bottom, a flurry of bubbles trailing along, broken crates and manmade busts swirling about. And instinctively, she holds on. She ignores the others that she would have grabbed- she wraps herself around him and guides them away from the debris.

The new object is heavy, even underwater. She manages to set him by her little wreckage, the largest piece of stone she has ever seen. He sits on one knee, chin resting against one large fist, lost in an eternal picture of concentration.

She mimics him and glares. The likes of this, she has never seen. She touches the flat spikes that poke from his head, his skin rough against her own. The statue looks like a cross between a sea monster and a land man, a strange combination of funny shapes and carved figures. She strikes his shoulder with her flipper. 

And she wonders whether those strange carved cloths are wings. Like a bird, she thinks. From the sky.

XX

She sings to him sometimes, in a low tune meant for his unhearing ears and no more. She knows every inch of his stone form, having run her hands and flippers over the rough craftsmanship. Rough, she thinks, but delicate nonetheless. She has seen finer statues but this one- she could almost take for a living being.

She learned long ago that statues hold no life of their own.

But this one? She does not know. She swims up and presses her head against his. It is cold and she wonders if a bit of her warmth will float in, intoxicate his stone features, and send a breath of life through his still form.

XX

She neglects the rest of her wreckage and she feels mild guilt. But, she assures herself, he needs her more. His expression is unchanging, as fierce as the storm that bore him. His wings stay unmoving, so still they might as well have been broken.

She memorizes the cracks on his form, telltale signs of age and wear and tear, an image broken from head to toe. She wonders where he used to stand, perhaps for the first time. She wonders if he was once as glorious as those ships beyond the horizon, their masts braving the world ahead, sails stretching towards the sky, basked in gold as they glide off.

But she has always preferred sunset to sunrise. She does not care how beautiful he once was. He is magnificent as he is, tinged in sadness, a tragedy in himself- she sees it in his face now. What she mistook for anger is sorrow, what she mistook for reluctance is defeat, what she mistook for cloth is wing. And he humbles her, the noble way he cradles such a fall. Battered and plucked from the sky, he lets time wash him over, accepts it all with such a poignant grace she can’t help but come to him.

The sky he shall never touch again. He shall sink and drown and when the ocean itself gives in, he shall plummet within that too. Into the bottom his fate goes until he is nothing but a shape in a shadow.

He will never see the sun. For he is fallen like the dipping light of sunset, without a cloud of salvation in sight. 

And after all these years, she is still in love with the fallen sun.

XX

She never mates. She has fondled the loving breasts and bare chests of many a companion, skins golden, charcoal, and pale, all a shade of blue underneath. She has touched flippers and coiled tails, rubbed the gleaming scales of her kin many a moon. But the one other half she never seeks.

Her brother has long since found his, and her sister as well, but she remains solitary. It is not lonely.

Or perhaps it is.

Something about this phantom pain pleases her. In some strange way, it pulls her back to _him_. You and I are alone together, she thinks. 

XX

Goliath is dead. He relinquished that name long ago. It stays floating in a sea of memories he yearns to scatter in the wind. 

And here, he sleeps. The sky is a burning turquoise, sheaths of light falling on him like a rain of soft candlelight. He has never seen the sun. He has never seen the blue sky. 

But that does not matter here. It is a dream and he will let himself dream a dead warrior’s dream.

The grass is soft and the wind is fair. But he stays on his back, glazed eyes turned upwards, lost in a siren’s song. He listens and reacts, halfway wishing it would leave him in silence, halfway hoping it would never stop.

An eternity lies ahead of him and he does not have the power to leave.

Goliath’s clan is gone. Goliath’s mate is dead. Goliath is nothing but the corpse of a failed leader. Everything that was and is Goliath is nothing more. Only he, a sleeping shadow, remains.

And the siren’s song is the only thing that reminds him he is here.

XX

She forgets he cannot hear, forgets he does not breathe, forgets he is not hers. Because for her, he does hear, he does breathe, he is hers, every inch of stone that make up his frozen body.

They are alone together. The ships that pass are sleeker, shinier, filled with different faces. And the fish are smaller, tenser, younger. And she- she will not be younger.

She touches the creases near her eyes, compares it to the smoothness of his face. You will stay like this forever, she thinks, young, beautiful, and I will become bones and dust. She pities him- he will never join her when her body turns to water.

She puts her chin on his head, arms wrapping around his neck. She forgets that he is cold. 

XX

-Sa. She calls herself -Sa. She takes shape in his mind, a glowing figure in the distance, her language made of hummed notes and rough chitters.

He wants to follow her but he lacks the strength to move. She is like nectar and he, a starved hummingbird. 

This nothingness and no more is all he deserves, he knows, perhaps not even this. A thousand times over he’d wished for death.

But -Sa, oh, -Sa, she is so near. And he realizes he wants to live.

He wants to live.

XX

In her silver age, she understands at last. He is her mate, strange and wrong, but she understands. Fate pulled her to him and lashed her there. She is his, whether he knows or not. And he has always been hers.

She sits above him, wrinkled hands tracing his rock of a head, caressing the hundred cracks that mar his skin. We aged together, she thinks. Perhaps he will finally break one day, scatter into a thousand pieces as she turns to dust and her tail’s color turns to bone. 

Their last years together are spent under the surface, the golden dabs of sunset passing above in a painted horizon, moonlight filtering through, the mirror of clouds flying overhead. 

Until the sun falls once more.

XX

Somewhere far, far from her old wreckage, long above the clouds she once marveled at, a castle stands.

XX

His first and last breath is not a breath at all. His world spins first, splitting the false sky in two and plunging him forward on imagined winds, the sun dipping into a much more familiar color. Navy.

And then he moves. For the first time in a millennium, he moves, action coursing through muscles and limp wings spreading. The stone plastered against his eyes splits away. 

He comes to life, whole, flesh, blood, warm. The stone flakes fly off, gusting ahead of him in a whirlpool of movement. Dark hair parts and a roar of bubbles blasts from his mouth, the rest of him consumed by water.

It enters his lungs in a split second, far too late for him to register that he is not on ground. And before it can pull him under, he sees.

-Sa, her name is -Sa.

Silver hair, brown eyes, a beautiful wrinkled face on olive skin, an aging torso connected to a fish’s vibrant tail. His siren.

She looks at him in awe, eyes wide, lips frozen. 

He can feel his own fall. He will dip and plunge and feel no more without a gulp of air. And he realizes he does not care. He has enough coherence, enough consciousness to touch her one final time.

He moves.

XX

He enters her world one last time in a flutter of furious white, the bubbles tracing his every failed breath, wings parted, as huge and long as she had only imagined.

Centuries had come and gone and he was before her at last. She watches, transfixed, as he approaches, features she had only known as stone now flesh, pumping through him like her own life’s blood. 

Lavender talons grip her, warm, strong. Black eyes stare into her, darker than she had imagined. She had imagined for years upon years and more, and had still failed to see what he would really be. 

He was more, so much more.

His shadow overwhelms her when he latches on, embracing her for dear life, running talons through her parting silver hair, his own dark locks so soft against her skin. She looks up, lost in his warmth, uses her last bit of aging strength to pull him down and puts her mouth over his.

He stops moving altogether. The bubbles dissipate. This the first and final breath they share, a burst of oxygen passed between them, flesh on flesh, and all the warmth of a setting sun.

XX 

As the world slips from above and below them, she knows she is dust. His grip is no more. And she knows he is too.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading and I hope you liked this odd piece. Comments/kudos are always welcome. 
> 
> This story was motivated by this drawing from ARTMENTAL: https://www.deviantart.com/artemental/art/bajo-el-mar-568590674


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